


in your bad dreams

by turtleseals



Category: Amenta - Alicorn, Glowfic and Related Works, I've got a list of names
Genre: Blasphemy, Child Abuse, Gen, Probable Historical Inaccuracy, all cultural groups treated as categories in a personality sorting system, caste stereotyping, deliberate inducing of an instance of abuse to achieve a separate goal, it's been frustrating me for a long time and I finally did something about it, mildly exaggerated portrayal of OCD, mildly exaggerated portrayal of mental illness, not naming the main character was a deliberate choice, potential mild canon non-compliance, racial stereotyping?, religious stereotyping, she sure says some things doesn't she
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:01:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24490243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turtleseals/pseuds/turtleseals
Summary: When the sky people arrived, she hadn't yet been sure whether she'd run away. She figured that what they were like would be the deciding factor.
Kudos: 6





	in your bad dreams

**Author's Note:**

> (Not naming the main character was a deliberate choice. The opinions and perceptions of the characters are not necessarily the same as those of the author. Constructive criticism welcome.)

When the sky people arrived, she hadn't yet been sure whether she'd run away. She figured that what they were like would be the deciding factor.

A few weeks later, it became abundantly clear they had Her Thing. The thing that made the other kids look weirdly at her when she'd pour water on her hands all the time and when she'd be too suspicious to eat any food that could possibly have gone off. The thing that made the adults sigh at her and made her momma pull her around by the ear. Her Thing, that her momma would always slap her for, when she quietly stole everyone else's soap when she'd used up all of her momma's, washing and re-washing her hands and hair and feet. 

(She was sometimes able to get soap from nowhere, it just kind of appeared when she felt _extremely_ gross and couldn't access any other soap, but momma just assumed she'd stolen from someone who hadn't noticed it was gone. She never mentioned it to anyone, really. A very single-pointed, totally unreliable power.)

The aliens had Her Thing, and theirs was slightly different, but they had tons of soap, and they had showers, where water would keep pouring and pouring on you as long as you liked and never get soapy or have the stuff you'd washed off yourself in it like a bath. They were cleaning away all the smelly poo on the streets, too, and giving people indoor bathrooms. 

When the aliens had told them that they had to shower for a long time after they did a whole list of various things, she went through the list, picked out 'visiting graveyards' as something not too gross for her, and started regularly sneaking into the graveyard. She'd putter around a while, maybe walk up to her great-grandma's grave and her grandpa's, but mostly the reason was so that she could shower, like the aliens, without her momma being able to interfere at all! The grey-haired alien guards that supervised the entrances and exits to the showers sent anyone who tried to interfere away from the showers, so her momma couldn't do a single thing to her for five whole hours while she washed and washed and washed. After coming out of the shower cabin, it was a different story, of course, but that was life.

She was honestly still bewildered why the other villagers didn't all love the whole thing, like she did, but that was her fate, she supposed. Five hours to decontaminate was a _bit_ much, she'd have had two or three as a standard, but not as awful as everyone else seemed to think, and she could certainly do the showers however much she needed to, in order to be able to live somewhere people thought her habits were _actually reasonable_.

\---

She made it her hobby to run around talking to the colored-hair people. They called themselves "Amentans" and they liked babies and didn't like "polluted" things. That was what they called it, "pollution sensitivity", and she started calling Her Thing by that name as well, and she didn't tell them yet that she was one of the humans who understood it but she knew she would soon. 

Their colors meant what kind of person they were, really, because so many of them were quite suited to their colors, but officially it was all based on what kind of jobs they were allowed to have. She liked the green ones but they were all mostly off up in their tightly packed clean cities unless they came down to ask everyone questions: "surveys", they called it. Some of the yellow ones and the orange ones were pretty cool too. 

Some of them were clearly meant to be another color but she guessed this might've been the same thing as when some Christians really ought to be Jews. Some Christians she knew really wanted to be able to act like Jews - question God, debate, analyse things about religion. But they all thought they'd go to Hell if they swapped "sides", so they didn't do anything about it. Or, well, perhaps the unsuitedness to colors was because of something completely different with roughly the same effect. Whatever, she didn't claim to be the Unsuitedness Expert.

She had never really believed any of the religions though. They were too - something. Too nonsensical, too confused, too much like momma's leeches and herbs. She knew what she was expected to say and do, by rote, most of the time, but she didn't inhabit the mindset.

\---

A while ago, when she was about six or seven, she'd made friends with the daughter of a respected merchant-scholar. He passed through the village from time to time, bringing his family with him occasionally to visit their cousins. The girls chattered non-stop the whole time they were together, and it didn't seem to matter how long you left them together or how short a time they'd been apart.

The girls would tell each other stories and fairytales and try to outdo one another all the time. Her friend's stories were creative, because she travelled around all the time and read a lot. But hers were creative-er, she thought. They had _cooler magic_. 

Her friend taught her to read and write and do sums; she hugged her friend gratefully for a _long_ while after that. Numbers were so pretty! Her friend thought she was silly for the hug, but knew: she does hugs, it's a thing, yep. Her friend was inwardly pleased about the hug, anyway.

(Her momma had tried to teach her to write before, when she was five, and her father had tried to teach her to do sums, when she was four, but it didn't make sense. It didn't stick in her head. They were either overcomplicating everything or condescendingly oversimplifying when they got frustrated. They hadn't shown her the _really_ awesome things, like the distributive property, and Pythagoras, and poetry. That didn't _actually_ count.)

The girls talked about all kinds of things: about what if they could have three wishes, and what if they could have infinity wishes. About how you would have to change things so people weren't mean to each other anymore, so that they would be happy and healthy instead. 

About how God, or G-d, or whatever, if he existed and was really all that omnipotent, was probably kind of mean, and should really just let everyone live in Heaven from birth and forever, and just make it actually nice and not as boring as it sounds. Or he could of course just turn Earth into something nicer, make Heaven right where all the people are already at. 

And, also, he should really give people all the magic powers and adventures they wanted, and let them _do_ what they wanted while keeping them safe from each other and their own mistakes. That seemed pretty obvious to the girls, and they often complained to each other about the fact that none of the priests ever _realised_ this was true, somehow.

\---

Later on, she made friends with another girl from her village, a couple years younger than her, who also couldn't seem to be interested in "lady" things. She told her all the stories she had come up with so that the girl would listen and be friends with her, and eventually they were also an inseparable duo.

She liked the singing in Church when momma took her, but she listened to the priest just like she listened to momma. When would husband things ever be relevant to her? She sucked at "being a lady" and wasn't going to "make an effort to improve" or any such thing. She would run away before she was fifteen, maybe pretend to be a boy, before she _ever_ got married to someone who _didn't really understand her_. 

\---

Over the years, the prospect of marriage, the constant slapping and hitting (and worse things), and particularly the pollution sensitivity, made her very fond of the idea of running away, and particularly, after they'd arrived, asking the Amentans if she could go live with them if she would follow their rules. Eventually, a few months after their arrival, they announce that they take kids away if they complain of beatings. 

She swipes a lot of soap from all over the village, which has by now been moved into those tall Amentan-buildings while their houses are being burnt down for pollution and rebuilt. She gets a bucket of water and starts washing her hands, the _human_ way, _inadequately_ , it's only a bucket and her hands are so very dirty, _polluted_ , but she catches her momma's eye and does all the things that annoy her and her momma gets her leather and - she comes to the social worker orange, with bruises and soaked and with mud in her hair and all over her face too. 

"- What's wrong?"

"Kefali Lepan, I'm, being beaten by my parents?" she begins, carefully. "Please take me away and never ever give me back to them?" She gauges his reaction, finds it relatively favourable, and continues. "Also, I'm one of the rare humans who has a pollution sense, as Amentans seem to mean it, and mine is slightlydifferentbutmostlysimilar so uh can I try to... help you guys with explaining it to humans and translate between the two species? ...and stuff?"

She seems to realise the state of her body again and hastily adds, "And also, before that, um, can I please have a decontamination shower, my mom pushed me into the dirt and it's just disgusting, you never know what's in the dirt around here, even now that you guys are around..."

"- Alright."   
Kefali Lepan calls over some other oranges, one of whom goes to write an "email" -- yesss she knows _all_ the Amenta words! -- and another leads her over to some shower stalls. He tells her where the towels are, starts to point out how the plumbing works - 

She waits for a pause, then tells him she knows most of it, because she's been doing a lot of it in such-and-such public shower but she has a question about this soap and that button and does this do that other thing and is it true that you need to do this -

He answers all her questions, is reassured she knows exactly what to do, puts on the instruction video anyway, and goes to fetch her some new clothes. 

She showers, still incredibly happy about it even after she has had this opportunity for months. She is so fond of the fact that they have _steps_ for showering! They make _so much sense_!!! Aaahhh! They have **_automatic soap dispensers_**!!!!!

Eventually, she is so tired of showering and her skin is kinda lumpy as usual but she's _clean, clean, clean_ and she's going to _stay_ clean this time and _that's_ what matters.

She wraps up in a fluffy towel and sits on a chair provided in the shower room, to rest a bit before putting on the provided clothes. They are in a plastic wrapping, brand new, and so very deeply reassuringly Amentan.

\---

Meanwhile, Amentans discuss the human with a pollution instinct.

"I mean, the questions she asked are basically what I would imagine an uninformed Amentan might ask of the shower, like, 'does the water get drained quickly and not build up and cover your feet', 'can you change how the shower head sprays water', 'is there a way to do this and that without touching the shower stall', 'is it okay to re-wash things even if the video doesn't say specifically to do so, or should I just go back to an earlier step and go from there again, in the order it gives', that sort of thing. Pretty convincing to me."

"Why didn't she mention it sooner, then?"

"She was talking to me and Lopan and Seti and a bunch of other people, all the time, wondering what it was like for Amentans. She could have been learning to fake it, but then again, could have been genuine interest and uncertainty about what we'd be like. And, as I said, she does seem to genuinely care about pollution..." 

"The poor dears, if they're really among the general population of humans then they must be so disgusted by everything every single day, they must be _miserable_."

The oranges hem and haw and eventually forward it to some blues.

Blues arrange communications to be sent out.

> If you are a human who understands the Amentans' attitudes to cleanliness, please contact your local regional coordinator.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Here are some of my opinions on how this story continues - you can adopt them as your headcanon, or not, whatever. Evaluate paragraphs one and two for headcanonization separately.
> 
> The plot of "I've got a list of names" proceeds, with an extra element of OCD human advisors who understand Amentan on an emotional level. The main character is adopted by a nice Amentan couple, who *let her shower*. She likes them fine and spends many a day crying about how strange it is to be with people who are *actually okay with what she's like*. She obtains a pocket everything, and spends a lot of time reading very niche fanfiction. She likes the cleaning shows her adoptive parents watch. She and a bunch of other OCD humans consult on how to handle humans, along with all the other, more normal, human consultants, and also the friendly wizards.
> 
> Eventually, she grows up, and it turns out that her absentee biological father was a wizard, and that's why she occasionally accidentally conjured soap. She eventually marries a green Amentan and they have many lovely wizard-hybrid babies when the Ways and their Amentan counterparts work things out. She learns wizardry, too, and unfortunately due to her area not having any major wizarding schools she's maybe worse than most wizards at transfiguration and potions, since those are particularly affected by an early start, but boy does she rock at charms. She is super motivated to learn all of magic but particularly those. After all, wingardium leviosa lets you *not touch stuff*!


End file.
